Title page for ETD etd-10102009-020342

The effects of map type and availability on performance with hypermedia

Degree

Master of Science

Department

Industrial and Systems Engineering

Advisory Committee

Advisor Name

Title

Snyder, Harry L.

Committee Chair

Donohoo, Daniel T.

Committee Member

Hix, Deborah S.

Committee Member

Keywords

User interfaces (Computer systems)

Date of Defense

1992-05-05

Availability

restricted

Abstract

Much of the hypermedia literature instructs developers to "Use a map to
prevent users from becoming lost." However, there is very little empirical
evidence that maps are effective. In addition, no one has examined how to
design the maps to make them most helpful to the users.

This research evaluates both issues for information retrieval tasks with a
fairly small hypermedia application (about 175 nodes). This study evaluates
the overall effectiveness of maps by comparing the subjects' performance
using hypermedia without a map to performance with one of four maps.
Then, it reveals the relative effectiveness of the different types of maps by
comparing the results of the subjects' performance with four variations of a
map. In addition, this research evaluates (1) the effects of the experimental
conditions on the subjects' mental models of the application and (2) the
effects of the subjects' spatial abilities on their performance with hypermedia.

The results reveal that there is generally no difference between the
subjects' performance with a map and performance without a map. In
addition, users who had to navigate using the links within the app~ication
rather than selecting nodes from the map (using a "passive" map) viewed
more extra nodes, but spent less time on each node and completed the tasks
in less time than those who could select nodes directly from the map (using
an "active" map). However, many of the subjects using the passive map
would have preferred to use an active map. Also, subjects who always had a
map available to them (using a "present" map) performed as well as subjects
who had to call up a map to use it (a "called" map).

In addition, there is no difference in the accuracy of the subjects' mental
models. All the subjects understood the application fairly well. A few of the
spatial abilities test results are correlated with performance, and all of
significant correlations indicate that higher spatial abilities leads to improved
performance with hypermedia. It is believed that the lack of differences
among the conditions is due to a number of factors, including the simplicity
of the application the subjects used and the tasks they performed.